


It's A Punderful Life

by nerddowell



Category: Versailles (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Long-Distance Friendship, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Philippe's Terrible Music Taste, Skype, Star Wars References, Teenage Dorks, The Princess Bride References, They're such nerds good grief, Trans Character, Trans Male Character, Trans Philippe, Tumblr, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-28
Updated: 2017-06-28
Packaged: 2018-11-19 23:28:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11323953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerddowell/pseuds/nerddowell
Summary: Based on a Tumblr 'imagine your OTP' prompt where person A and person B are long-distance friends over skype. Inspired also by my personal experiences of being a LDR friend to my belovedehuruwho is the best person ever end of, and my less-distance-but-still-LDR relationship with my despicable-pun-making boyfriend, from whom I stole many of Philippe and Chevy's lines.Basically, Tumblr nerds MonChevy bond over music and terrible puns, and become Skype buddies.





	1. B-A-N-A-N-A-S

**Author's Note:**

> Dan, babe, this is all for you, and I love/hate you for the amount you 'contributed' to this. Bite me.
> 
> I know I promised I'd write more canon-era fic, but I needed to get this out of my system first to be honest.

It had started, in all honesty, one night at God knows what time in the morning when he was drunk after a bad breakup with an ex and had been spewing his feelings all over his Tumblr and generally feeling sorry for himself, so he’d asked people to send him stupid or funny things to cheer himself up. Admittedly, most of his exes weren’t worth even the effort of hitting the ‘create new post’ button, but venting had always made him feel better and at least he’d get responses, unlike a diary. And it was Louis-proof; a little editing of his blog safety settings and he was 90% sure his brother would never find it, or find out about all of the shit Philippe had been talking about him on there. It had become so frequent that he’d had to create the tag ‘#dickhead rants’ just for Louis.

Anyway, he’d recently broken things off with Armand after a messy after-party argument which he didn’t remember all that clearly beyond the fact that things were thrown at him, and he was listening to his saddest playlist and singing along to Soft Cell’s _Tainted Love_ when his blog inbox pinged. He ignored it for a couple of minutes, as – without blowing his own trumpet – he had something of a popular blog, and received anywhere between thirty and a hundred messages every day, so one more didn’t matter all that much to him. He reblogged a couple of gifsets of the latest Netflix drama he’d been watching and clicked on the little red number bubble over the inbox tab.

The first twenty or so messages were all people saying things like ‘sorry hun x’ and ‘you can do better’, but the next – from a blog called hollaback-boy – had sent him an ask, out of the blue, which read _THIS SHIT IS BANANAS. B-A-N-A-N-A-S_. He cocked his head, confused, but couldn’t fight a smile – he’d reblogged an audio track of Gwen Stefani earlier, being a nostalgic child of the 90s and deciding to indulge his (according to Liselotte) horrible music taste. He posted the ask to his blog with a, ‘Ooh, this my shit (this my shit)’ with the corresponding gif, and wrote in the tags that he couldn’t wait to hear back from this person because he still wasn’t sure if he was being trolled or not.

He clicked on the blog name and it brought up a profile full of glitter 3D text saying ‘no one cares’, too many variations of the most popular meme recently, and wanky aesthetic posts. He rolled his eyes and clicked off, back to his dash, to see that there was another message in his inbox. This time, he didn’t wait to for it to fill back up to annoying levels before opening the mail, and he laughed at loud this time as the ask – again from hollaback-boy – read _My anaconda don’t my anaconda don’t my anaconda don’t want none unless you got puns hun_.

He scoured his memory for one of Bontemps’ dad jokes, but could only manage _My wife found out I replaced our bed with a trampoline. She hit the roof._ The post garnered a few likes, but after ten minutes there was still no response from hollaback-boy, which he tried not to let get him down. Even after only a couple of messages back and forth, he’d felt as though they had a connection. Or at least a mutual fondness for shitty music and worse puns.

His inbox pinged a couple of minutes later, and he immediately clicked it open.

 **hollaback-boy** asked you:  
_it’s hard to explain puns to kleptomaniacs because they always take things literally_

Philippe bit back a laugh and skipped forward to _Tonight, Tonight, Tonight_ on his Spotify, typing out a reply. _A Christian came to my door and looked confused when I said I didn’t believe the words of Genesis. It just didn’t captivate me once Peter Gabriel left_. He chewed on his thumbnail as he waited for the response, realising that the majority of people his age who had dads who weren’t Bontemps and his 70s/80s prog-rock-listening ilk likely wouldn’t even understand that joke. Still, he had Bontemps to thank – or perhaps more accurately, blame – for a lot of his music taste, so Philippe knew that his surrogate ‘dad’ would have been proud of him for that pun. A number one popped up above his inbox a couple of seconds later and he clicked on it immediately, breath catching in his chest.

 **hollaback-boy** asked you:  
_that was a pretty sweet pun. a blockbuster, one might even say_.

Philippe stared at the ask for a long few seconds before bursting out laughing. Somehow, entirely by accident, he’d found someone who not only knew their ridiculous glam-rock 70s English bands, but they shared Philippe’s own enthusiasm for puns and mischief (a secret he guarded jealously, as being seen as Louis’ more dour brother worked in his favour quite often when trying to convince Bontemps to allow him to do something he wasn’t technically allowed to). He clicked back onto hollaback-boy’s profile and saw that they were the same age as Philippe, 17. Unfortunately, they were also based miles away in Canada, and Philippe doubted even he could coerce Bontemps into allowing him to travel that far alone. Instead, he simply clicked the follow button on **hollaback-boy** ’s blog, before trying to come up with a decent response to their last ask.

_My barista’s a Lindsey Buckingham fan. Whenever I go in for a coffee, he makes a Fleetwood macchiato and says ‘You can foam your own way.’_

It makes even him groan, but a couple of moments later, his IM pings with a message from hollaback-boy.

 **hollaback-boy:**  
i think we should swap emails or skypes or something because i need to see the look on your face when you tell me these jokes

 **philippe-philoppe:**  
just imagine the crylaugh emoji crossed with the facepalm

 **hollaback-boy:**  
seems about right anyway i’m hollaback-boy on skype too so if i don’t get an add within a couple of minutes i’ll come back on here and yell at you

Philippe smiled and opened his skype, logging in and typing _hollaback-boy_ into the search bar. It came up with a cute, curly-haired blond living in Toronto with a status reading ‘i’d be pissed if i was a kidney stone’. It made Philippe laugh out loud, so hard that his chest ached, and he sent ‘How much does a polar bear weigh? Enough to break the ice. Hi, I’m Philippe,’ back.

A couple of seconds later, he got a video call, and he accepted it with only the barest traces of trepidation before his laptop screen maximised to a dark bedroom with a glittery silver star lamp beside the bed and the cute blond boy from the user photograph grinning at him. His hair was longer than the photo, pushed back behind his ears (which stuck out adorably), and he looked like he was trying to grow in a moustache, with a thin growth of peach-fuzz blond fluff on his top lip. Philippe sat for several minutes just pretending to stroke a beard before the guy got it and rolled his eyes.

‘Don’t be jealous of my beauty.’

‘No, you’re right,’ Philippe said, grinning, ‘I’d give my left tit to grow a beard. Hell, I’d give them both. Actually, you can have them both regardless. Just take them!’

The guy smiled. ‘Trans puns right out of the gate. I’m impressed.’

‘Not as impressed as I’ll be with the surgeon if the addadictomy goes well.’

The other boy burst out laughing, throwing his head back, and Philippe sat back against his pillows, proud of himself. It took several minutes for hollaback-boy to calm down enough to continue speaking, and even then, he’d cast glances at Philippe and obviously remember the joke because he’d lapse into giggles again. Eventually, he shook his head and combed his fingers through his curls, dragging them back into a bun at the back of his head before changing his position, resting his laptop on his knee as he settled back against his bedroom wall.

‘I never introduced myself, did I? I’m your friendly transcontinental Tumblr stalker. My name’s Chev, or Chevy, I guess, if you prefer.’

‘What do you prefer?’ Philippe asked, pushing his hair behind his ear and shrugging his shoulders forward a bit, squinting at the bright light coming through the window. He hadn’t even realised that he’d stayed up all night, but it didn’t surprise him, either. He flicked his Death Star lamp off and shook his hair out over his back. His phone in his speaker dock was still playing his Spotify mix, this time _Walk Like An Egyptian_ by the Bangles, and he caught himself lip-syncing along, making Chev on the other end of the call smile.

‘Either is fine. Oh, and I found another pun for you. I hope you like the Foo Fighters.’ Chev tapped away on his computer for a moment before a file share request for a .jpeg file came up on Philippe’s screen, and he clicked accept. It took a couple of seconds to download before he could open it, but when he did – and saw a photo of Dave Grohl photoshopped among a group of otters with the words _WHAT IF I SAY I’M NOT LIKE THE OTTERS_ , he lost it. He laughed until he cried, until he had to clutch his chest where it was spasming painfully under his binder, and he heard Chev laughing delightedly.

‘That was amazing,’ he gasped, wiping the tears out of his eyes, and Chev smirked.

‘I trust I’ve cheered you up at least a little.’

‘You definitely have,’ Philippe said, nodding. ‘Thanks.’

‘Any time. Anyway, don’t worry; you’ll find Mr Right. Especially now that bastard has left.’

‘Eh, 6/10. Good effort, but poorly executed.’

‘The Nearly Headless Nick of puns,’ Chev said in an atrocious attempt at John Cleese’s voice, and Philippe nearly fell about laughing again.

‘9/10. Much better.’

‘Cut me some slack. I’m not having a good Thursday. In fact, it’s a _trajeudi_ ,’ Chev said, spreading his hands apologetically, and Philippe smiled.

‘You’re telling me puns in French.’ Philippe gasped in a mock-besotted voice, batting his eyelashes and clasping his hands together, ‘ _C’est un coup de foudre_.’

‘As opposed to a _coup de foutre_?’

‘Filthy,’ Philippe scolded, and Chev cackled. Philippe felt his heart skip a beat, and he couldn’t help a laugh, which devolved into both of them laughing so hard neither could breathe, and a very cross Bontemps storming into Philippe’s room to demand that he go to bed right this instant before that dying hyena noise woke the whole house. Philippe regretfully said goodnight to Chev, who waved a cheerful goodbye and promised to talk again soon, and flicked off his Death Star light with a smile that refused to budge off his lips for a good few hours afterwards.


	2. Don't Make Me Go Solo

Every day when Philippe got back from school, he would log straight onto his laptop to see if there were any new messages from Chev before realising that the other boy was no doubt still in high school, although there were frequently new puns in his Tumblr inbox. One read

 **hollaback-boy** asked you:  
_what do you get if church musicians get a chronic illness? total organ failure_

and the next,

 **hollaback-boy** asked you:  
_time flies like an arrow fruit flies like a banana_

until he was looking forward to his daily ridiculousness almost more than seeing Chev’s face on the skype call. Of course, it never quite got to that point. Chev’s slightly nasal Québécois accent was sometimes impossible to understand, even when he was speaking ‘proper’ French (as he often teased Philippe for speaking). Of course, there were plenty of things that Philippe teased him for – the fact that Chev owned, unironically, a Celine Dion cd (‘She won Eurovision for you lot in 1988, show the woman a little respect!’ ‘No, she won for Switzerland!’), the poster of _Kinky Boots_ over his bed (for which he had a matching pair of sparkly red thigh-high platformed boots and recreated the poster in his pyjamas for Philippe once, which quickly became Philippe’s phone background), and his obsession with Rocky Horror. After Philippe confessed that he’d never seen it, Chev demanded that they watch it together, and worked his magic to link their screens so that they could watch it at the same time. He knew all the words, and Philippe found watching him watch it was even funnier than the film itself, especially when he tried to join in with Columbia’s tap solo and fell off his bed.

The more they spoke to each other, the more he and Chev grew to become great friends, skyping each other nearly every night. Philippe was starting to forget what being well-rested felt like from how often he stayed up until the wee hours talking to his friend, but he couldn’t bring himself to care too much when it meant that he got to make Chev laugh for hours. His laugh was captivating; bright and bubbling, and his eyes would squeeze shut and his curls quiver with the force of his laughter. Of course, he was mostly laughing at the stupid memes Philippe deliberately searched out for him online or at the impromptu dance concerts Philippe held in his room whenever he was in the mood for Wham! or Madonna, but his laugh made Philippe’s stomach flip – in a good way – so he wasn’t about to complain.

Chev was the first person he told when the doctor’s letter for parental permission for testosterone therapy came through the mail, and his friend kept laughing and trying to calm him down whilst Philippe shrieked – ignoring the fact that it was almost 3am – and bounced on the bed, waving the letter above his head. He broke three bed slats that night and had to explain, red-faced, to Bontemps that he’d been undergoing vigorous exercise on his bed as Louis, in his pyjamas, smothered giggles behind his hand and Chev snickered from his computer screen.

From then on, they shared all of each other’s milestones over skype. Philippe passed his Grade 7 piano exam, and Chev finally managed to get his re-enactment of the Prime Minister’s dance through 10 Downing Street from _Love Actually_ perfect (filmed by one of his friends and shared with Philippe via Snapchat). Philippe promised that Chev was of course much better looking than Hugh Grant, at which his friend scoffed (‘Of course I am!’) before playing the song on his Spotify to get Chev to give him a live show. He ended up falling off his bed laughing as Chev shuffled widthways across a corridor, hips wiggling, and he ended up joining in with the song lyrics. Chev reappeared a moment later, red-faced and pushing sweaty hair out of his to frown in confusion at Philippe, who was – in direct contravention of Bontemps’ newly-minted rule – jumping up and down on his bed.

‘What on earth are you doing, you fool?’

‘Jumping,’ Philippe said with a grin, ‘for your love.’

Chev snorted and rolled his eyes. ‘Well stop for goodness’ sake before you break through the ceiling and land on dear Bontemps, bed and all.’

‘I suppose you’re right,’ Philippe admitted reluctantly, and sat back down on his bed, beaming at Chev. They stared at one another, grinning stupidly, for a long time before Chev suddenly moved to press something on his laptop and the video cut out. Philippe clicked everything he could think of, trying to fix the problem, until Chev’s disembodied voice came from the black screen.

‘Philippe, I need to tell you something.’

‘Anything. What’s the matter?’ It had to be serious if Chev wasn’t willing to have them looking at each other whilst he said it. Philippe spent an eternity running through every possibility – Chev was ill; something terrible had happened to his family; he was having to move away to a place with no internet and they’d never be able to contact each other again; he was emigrating to the moon – before Chev put him out of his misery with a quiet little cough before speaking.

‘You see, there’s kind of a formal dance at my school for the end of exams and stuff, and it’s expected of one to bring some beautiful young lady on one’s arm, which so far is the only thing I’m lacking as I have the world’s most amazing tuxedo.’

‘Did you have someone in mind?’ Philippe asked, managing not to let on how his stomach was suddenly in knots.

‘Well, I do, but I’m not sure if they’d say yes.’

‘Why the hell wouldn’t they? I mean, the second you sent me those fucking Gwen Stefani lyrics I was hooked. And you have the dumbest, best sense of humour I’ve ever seen – you laugh at dad jokes that even Bontemps groans at, and do you have any idea how hard it is to find someone who’ll do that? You’re handsome, you’re charming, you’re going to look amazing in any tuxedo – hell, even a trash bag would suit you. You’re kind of the best person I know, and any girl is going to be lucky as hell to go to prom with you,’ Philippe said, ignoring how his voice trailed off to a slightly tear-choked mumble towards the end. Of course Chev was going to ask a girl, a real girl who would be happy to parade around after him and be crowned Queen and wear a long trailing dress and get a corsage and a kiss.

Chev was silent on the other end for a couple of seconds before he made a thoughtful noise.

‘I’ve no doubts of my personal charms and the draw of attending such an event on my arm, dear,’ Chev said, a smile in his voice, ‘I’m just a little worried about the distance. 6000km is an awfully long way for one night.’

‘Who the bloody hell were you planning to ask? Isn’t there anyone a little closer to home?’ Philippe asked, laughing. Something was niggling in the back of his mind, but he was preoccupied with trying to identify one of the girls about whom Chev had talked to him during the past month that would be a potential fit. There was Sophie, who despite being Chev’s cousin of sorts was very pretty and who would, with her dark hair and eyes, look striking next to his angelic blond curls.

‘Look, just do me a favour and type in the distance between Paris and Toronto into Google.’

Philippe did as he was told and frowned when it came up with _5997km_.

‘Nearly 6000km, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘So, when can you book the flights?’

Philippe made a strangled noise, his eyes going wide, and Chev’s face suddenly reappeared in the video screen. Well, his face presumably behind a Storm Trooper helmet, sitting next to a large cardboard cutout of Chewbacca holding a sign with ‘Don’t make me go Solo’ written on it. When Philippe still sat there speechless, Chev’s hand appeared, holding a Princess Leia dress and wig on a clothes hanger up on screen, and Philippe burst out in laughter, his eyes tearing up.

‘Hell, yes.’

‘Excellent. Execute order 69: take over the dance floor and rule the galaxy!’

‘What colour do I have to wear?’ Philippe asked, immediately getting up to rifle through his wardrobe to find something suitable.

‘Whatever you pick out, I want to see you in, first. No clashing allowed.’

‘I find your lack of faith disturbing,’ Philippe said, inhaling deeply behind a hand muffling his mouth in his best Darth Vader impression, and Chev started humming the _Imperial March_ before brightening.

‘That’s it! I’m going to request _The Throne Room_ at prom. We have to dance to it.’

‘I can’t believe you Star Wars’ed me to go to prom with you.’

‘Of course, darling. When seducing a nerd, one has to go all-out, and the more puns and cult movie references, the better.’

‘My only complaint would be not enough Princess Bride,’ Philippe said, grinning at him, and Chev beamed.

‘My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father. Prepare to dance with me?’

‘Much better.’

**Author's Note:**

> hollaback-boy is a real tumblr blog that isn't me pretending to be philippe, but just for fair warning, the only posts i've seen on there are like, explicit gay porn so if that's not your thing maybe don't look them up.
> 
> philippe-philoppe is a url i have saved because i'm a pun-loving asshole who's not ready to let go of transdorleans but i equally wanted myself to have the opportunity if i ever wanted it
> 
> oh. and:  
>   
> you're welcome.


End file.
